The Near Earth Object Survey TELescope (NEOSTEL - also known as "Flyeye") is an astronomical survey and early-warning system for detecting near-Earth objects sized and above a few weeks before they impact Earth. NEOSTEL is a project founded by the

European Space Agency , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (1205 ...

(ESA), starting with an initial prototype currently under construction at OHB in Milan, Italy. The telescope is of a new "fly-eye" design inspired by the wide field of vision from a

fly's eye The High Resolution Fly's Eye or HiRes detector was an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray observatory that operated in the western Utah desert from May 1997 until April 2006. HiRes used the atmospheric fluorescence technique that was pioneered ...

. The design combines a single objective reflector with multiple sets of optics and CCDs, giving a very wide field of view (around , or 220 times the area of the full moon). When complete it will have one of the widest fields of view of any telescope and be able to survey the majority of the visible sky in a single night. If the initial prototype is successful, three more telescopes are planned, in complementary positions around the globe close to the equator. In terms of light gathering power, the size of the primary mirror is not directly comparable to more conventional telescopes because of the novel design, but is equivalent to a conventional 1-metre telescope and should have a limiting magnitude of around 21. The project is part of the NEO Segment of ESA's Space Situational Awareness Programme. The telescope itself should be complete by end of 2019, and installation on Mount Mufara, Sicily should be complete in 2020, having been agreed with the Italian Space Agency in October 2018. Development of the telescope was reported as on track in Feb 2019.

Optics

The

fly eye Apposition eyes are the most common form of eye, and are presumably the ancestral form of compound eye. They are found in all arthropod groups, although they may have evolved more than once within this phylum. Some annelids and bivalves also ...

aspect of the telescope refers to the use of compound optics, as opposed to the single set of optics used in a conventional telescope. Classically, telescopes were designed around a single human observer looking through an eye piece. Astrographs were developed in the 19th century where a

photographic plate Photographic plates preceded photographic film as a capture medium in photography, and were still used in some communities up until the late 20th century. The light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts was coated on a glass plate, typically thinn ...

, or later a CCD, records the image, which a human observer can then view. With the human eye no longer directly observing the image there is no longer a restriction on a single viewing point, and asteroid detection software has become fully automated, so a human observer need not view the majority of images at all. Light enters the NEOSTEL telescope through the aperture and is reflected off the primary mirror onto a secondary, consisting of 16 mirrors arranged on a hexadecagonal pyramid. The split beam then passes into 16 separate aspheric lenses and on to 16 corresponding CCD image sensors. NEOSTEL uses the 16 CCD cameras to view 45 square degrees of light entering the telescope aperture. The pixel scale is 1.5 arc seconds per pixel across the whole field of view.

Observatory

NEOSTEL's detection capabilities and the quality of service it requires (in particular, the use of a fast slewing equatorial mount) mean that a standard telescope dome and observatory design will not be sufficient. Work has been carried out on optimizing the design of the infrastructure layout to solve these problems, whilst minimising the impact of the infrastructure on the environment in Madonie Regional Natural Park, where Monte Mufara is situated.

References

{{Portal bar, Astronomy, Stars, Spaceflight, Outer space, Solar System Optical telescopes Astronomical surveys Asteroid surveys Near-Earth object tracking

Optics

Observatory

See also

References